Stellar Flow is a no-code/low-code visual workflow automation tool for Stellar.

Users can choose between Open Source (self-hosted) and Subscription-based (fully managed).

The problem

A simple business concept for a remittance product is quite simple: Onramp USDC using Moonpay, create a custodial account, exchange to ARS, and offramp using Anclap.

To achieve this, a developer must understand the particularities of the network:

• An account must be created, and perhaps it has a signer added to it for security purposes.
• A trustline to the USDC asset must be created
• The asset must be exchanged to ARS (Payments, DEX, Liquidity Pools)
• Understanding of the various SEPs to withdraw

Early-stage startups trying to build on the Stellar network face talent shortage at an adequate price; when developers that aren't familiarised with the Stellar network take on one of these projects, the time to market is increased due to the steep learning curve.

The solution

Intended to be used by early-stage startups and developers, Flow offers pre-built building blocks with best practices in mind and is built on the shoulders of battle-tested workflow tools such as n8n.io (https://docs.n8n.io/embed/white-labelling/).

How it works

Similar to Pipedream, n8n or Zapier; Developers need to drag & drop blocks that represent each of the steps of a workflow, and complete the relevant information in each step. One account can have unlimited workflows created.

Stellar Flow will provide drag & drop building blocks to create accounts, make payments, connect anchors, execute Soroban smart contracts, and much more.

We have developed n8n nodes for Stellar. See https://sharing.clickup.com/clip/p/t42659001/87ad24fd-caaf-474a-a4ce-bf1970ba3d9e/screen-recording-2023-04-07-10:20.webm

Stellar Flow is a ScaleMote initiative; ScaleMote helps non-technical founders launch their startup within budget using rock-solid software engineering solutions.

💸 | Revenue Model & Funding

• How will you make money?

Directly: Subscription model.

Indirectly: As the creators of the workflow, ScaleMote can be hired to implement the solution end to end (not just the workflow).

• How will you keep your Project running?

ScaleMote PTY LTD is an Australian registered company founded in November 2022, we currently have a team of 30 and growing, this is a new vertical for our company.

• How do you plan to set prices?

Open source: Free.

USD 250/mo for business starter (managed).

USD 1650/mo for enterprise.

• What is your financial plan?

Our cost to launch this solution in 4 months with 1 Software Architect, 3 software developers and 1 project manager is 16,500 USD/mo; we are able to hire 5 people for an average of USD 3.300 since we hire talent in LATAM (and we are Spanish speakers too).

We have AWS credits that we can put to use this so no hosting costs need to be covered.

Because we are a Software Development company, once the product is launched, support and new features can be done ad-hoc, while those resources can be redeployed to other projects.

Assuming after launch we require 2 software developers full time at an avg cost of USD 3,300, we'd need 27 business starter clients, 4 enterprise clients, or any equivalent combination. If we include indirect revenue (customers asking ScaleMote to develop the whole solution), the numbers are much lower.

Are you on the hunt for further funding?

Not at this stage.

🔎 | Market & Industry Research

• In what industry will your Project operate?

Software Tooling

• How significant is the problem your Project seeks to solve?

We believe it's significant -- Entrepeneurs in the Stellar ecosystem not always have the means to launch their products. Our project could cater for those that don't make it into the Stellar Community Fund grant, but also those who have won the grant and are looking for cost-effective ways of going live.

• What's the size of the market your Project operates in?

Over 1,300 submissions for SCF since it's launch in 2016 [1], we also regularly recommend Stellar as a solution to our FinTech customers.

[1] https://communityfund.stellar.org/projects

• What are the threats and opportunities (government regulations, technology, economy, etc.)?

Threats: Our application will work as long as we can connect to 3rd parties; This always carries risk as the crypto industry settles into a more mature landscape (for instance, an integration with Wyre would have meant an operational nightmare once they stopped operating).

Opportunities: Stellar Flow can become the most cost-effective alternative to kickstart a Stellar project, making it even simpler for Stellar to be an open network for storing and moving money.

With limited funding available to Web3 startups [2], who have been declining from 800 Deals at ~8bn invested in Q4 '21 to 320 deals for almost half (~4bn) to Q4'22, having an affordable way of launching a solution on Stellar is more relevant than ever.

[2] see https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6cf89778-6502-4134-9baf-f2bb222318eb_1524x962.png)

⚔️ | Competition

• Who are your competitors?

Other software development agencies, other workflow tools (zapier, n8n, pipedream)

• Why is your solution better?

Our solution is stellar-based, built on top of n8n.io and cost-effective vs other software development agencies.

👥 | Resources & Relationships

• Are you working with anchors or other Stellar-based projects?

Yes, Anclap. We also have experience with Moonpay and Stably.

• What unique resources and relationships do you have that are going to make you succeed?

ScaleMote is an Australian software development agency that connects talent from argentinaprograma.com with companies around the world. In 3 short months, we are cashflow positive and have a team of 30+ and a talent pool of 6k+.

ScaleMote is already helping companies to build stellar-based solutions.

📮 | Marketing & Sales

• How will you reach your users?

We will reach users by showcasing our portfolio, as well as attending startup hubs meetups like Fishburners or Microsoft for Startups in Sydney as we have been doing with excellent results in our first 3 months of operation.

• Through what channels (social media, Discord, etc.)

Social Media (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram) & Discord

• How will you convert prospects into customers?

We offer free technical consultations, we will let users try the cloud version for free.

Revised first deliverable (07 Apr 2023):

We have open-sourced our project; It includes project setup on top of n8n. https://github.com/ScaleMote/flow

Despite multiple attempts to get in touch with Moonpay via Support, LinkedIn and common acquaintances, they did not reply to us, which means the integration was not able to be completed since we don't have an API key.

For our first deliverable, we have created a Stellar "node" which contains actions and events, as well as allowing the configuration of different horizon servers for the workflow execution.

Example using a workflow builder to create an account and fund it with friendbot upon executing the workflow

https://sharing.clickup.com/clip/p/t42659001/87ad24fd-caaf-474a-a4ce-bf1970ba3d9e/screen-recording-2023-04-07-10:20.webm

Example kicking off a workflow by listening to an event when an account gets paid XLM (it can be configured to listen for any assets, or specific assets)

https://sharing.clickup.com/clip/p/t42659001/5b8c2c68-7ffd-4e71-8e6a-6b70dbc24993/screen-recording-2023-04-07-10%3A38.webm

Our next deliverable will include onramping and offramping with Anclap.

Original deliverable:

We will deliver our first use-case of allowing on-ramping with Moonpay, creating an account, exchanging USDC to ARS and off-ramping with Anclap.

This includes the initial setup.

Here is the URL where you can play around with the n8n server that includes the stellar node: http://ec2-3-237-80-120.compute-1.amazonaws.com:5678/

Please note it's HTTP (not https) because I didn't set up SSL certs or put it behind a load balancer -- the final configuration will use the recommended (by n8n) Kubernetes configuration which is why we prefered to use our time in developing more features than sorting out infrastructure at this stage.

You can look at the videos, you can create a workflow yourself, or you can execute the existing workflows. Please note the Stellar event listener only listens for payment events for the time being.